Hello from Miss Lowry and Mrs Lake
We hope you are enjoying the lovely weather this weekend. Click on the link below for a little message and story. Keep safe!
Please email us the books you have enjoyed reading at home. natalielake@spherefederation.org kaylowry@spherefederation.org
Hello from Miss Parling
Hope you are all well and having a great weekend. I have recorded a message sharing some facts about sea creatures and the page is on here too for you read if you would like.
Message from Mrs Latham
I’ve recorded a message for you after setting up a tent for garden camping! Hope you are all well and enjoying the sunshine. The poems are below if you want to read them.
Happy home learning – all about the emoji ❤️😊👍🏽
The ‘Design your own Emoji’ task has been very popular today! We love all your ideas and have also enjoyed hearing from lots of people, seeing photos and keeping in touch via email. Keep sending us your messages, photos and videos. Remember though, looking after your health and emotional well being is the most important thing at this time. Any missed learning can be caught up on at school when all this is over. We miss you all and hope to see you soon.
Easter holidays and Week 3 pictures
We hope you had a lovely Easter holiday. Thank you for the emails, we have enjoyed seeing some of the things you have been getting up to. This has included egg rolling, making NHS thank you signs and a number of different science experiments.
We have also had the first pick of some rhubarb from the school garden. The rhubarb was hand delivered to lollipop Sue to enjoy. I wonder what she will make with it?
End of the week message from Mr Catherall
Watch this video and find out about an exciting announcement for Monday.
24 April 2020: Hall of (home learning) Fame
Hello and welcome back to a very special edition of…Hall of (home learning) Fame! “HOHLF, HOHLF, HOHLF!”
Today, we have a special entry. Usually, this is a compilation of learning. Today, it is not. Today, one person can hold their head high. Today, one person can feel proud. Today, one person has made history.
Yesterday, I received a piece of writing from one member of 56OB. I was blown away! So blown away that I had to share. People of the world, I give you our first ever solo entrant in the Hall of (home learning) Fame #HoHLF…Harry!
Well done, Harry – this writing is amazing! Welcome to the Hall of (home learning) Fame.
Check out Harry’s writing:
She pulled down on the chain with her left hand, steering herself towards her target. It was supposed to be the most exciting 13th birthday present ever; a hot air balloon ride. However, Alice had been hanging on for dear life for over 100KM (since the basket of the hot air balloon had fallen off). She was now getting used to steering the huge balloon by maneuvering her body, leaning to the left or to the right.
Terrified yet excited at the same time, Alice could just about make out her house and garden far below. It was the one surrounded by trees straight ahead, wasn’t it?
Alice was a young thirteen-year-old from Chicago, USA. She didn’t have many friends but had 2 friends since she was 6. She liked reading, playing with her friends, and going to her local park on a weekend. She had light brown hair (nearly blonde) and twinkling blue eyes. She can speak a bit of Spanish and Mexican (may help her in this story) and She’s curious and quite nosey too.
She took a deep breath and focused… She got closer. Closer. It was not home but she recognised the place like she’d been there before. Alice was thinking where she could be while slowly but dangerously falling to the ground. She landed in a tree. “Great!” she said sarcastically.
After about an hour of getting down without injuring herself, she finally got down with a couple of scratches on her arms and legs – nothing major. Alice was going through déjà vu. She was hallucinating because of a lack of hydration and kept going from actual life to flashbacks from years back. The town looked deserted to what she could remember: shops boarded up, cars so dusty they looked they hadn’t been touched in years, an old park filled up with weeds coming from the ground and bushes growing through the gates; Alice didn’t get close no matter how curious she was.
Alice started searching the village for any sort of human life, hours and hours but still nothing. Dehydration was kicking in. Her brain was screaming at her to find something to drink but she was already in a home finding a water tap that still functioned cold, filtered water. House after house (with no sleep at all) she finally found a fridge with some water bur little food. She took it as a win and for the next week settling in the same house. There was a small mattress with a small quilt that looked dirty and damp but worked for now.
The water had started to run cloudy and had a strange smell, she needed to move on so she attempted to go out and find human life to tell her where she was. Alice started the trek for her own safety and walked days on end without finding anything. She was about to give up when she saw what looked like people in the distance. At that moment in time, she was in a forest and could see a couple of huts as well as people. She started running as fast as she could until she got there. “Hello,” she said. “Do you speak English?”
They looked at her for a minute or so. Silence and confusion were the words to describe that minute. Finally came an answer. “Hola mi nombre es Pablo,” one boy said. Alice knew Spanish and translated in her head, “Hello, my name is Pablo.” She replied in Spanish and she started explaining her situation while thinking in her head “Thank goodness I started listening to my Spanish teacher in the middle of Year 7.”
After talking for a bit, they asked if she was hungry and fed her and gave her water. After her meal she was given a fresh pair of clothes and somewhere to freshen up, it had been a while. That night she had a good sleep in one of the huts preparing herself for the journey ahead… Alice woke up. There weren’t many kids there but she didn’t mind because she wasn’t that social towards people. She got herself ready for her trip back to Chicago.
She asked finally where they were and they replied saying somewhere close to Chicago and they moved from Mexico. After she said her final goodbyes, and she headed West towards Chicago. Some days after setting off she saw her village and also her house. She sprinted harder than she did last time she saw human life and saw her mum and dad talking to the police about her, they all cheered and the look of relief was a picture. Alice was home. She ran to hug her mum and dad with her eyes filled with tears.
That night, she told her mum and dad the entire story. Luckily it was the weekend so plenty of time to rest. Monday came and she went to school and saw her two best friends and got back into her normal life. Her best friend laughed and said to her “So what’s next year’s birthday plans? To which Alice replied, “I think we’ll just stick to a movie and pizza.”
WOW! I think you’ll agree that’s incredible. Why not give Harry a message and celebrate this great effort with him?
If you haven’t already, send in a picture of you, or your learning, accompanied by #HoHLF, and you could be in the Hall of (home learning) Fame, too. *
*Terms and conditions: you must send a picture to be entered into the Hall of (home learning) Fame. Winners will be posted on this section of the website and will receive their prize as soon as they read it. The prize is a virtual high five from the Year 5,6 team.
24 April 2020: Home learning
Phonics/Literacy (writing focus)
1.Practise your letter formation in your home learning book. You can use the letter formation ditty’s in your pack to help you.
2.Quickwrite! Write the following digraphs.
Parents: Please read the digraphs to your child. They can then write them their home learning book.
|
qu |
ch | sh |
th |
3.Time to talk!
- Dance to the music.
- When the music stops find a partner.
- Talk to your partner about some news you’d like to share.
Remember: to be a good talking partner your eyes should be looking and your ears should be listening AND hearing.
- Now it’s time to write! Practise saying your news in a sentence. Count the words in your sentence. Now write your news in a sentence. Don’t forget to check your writing! You can draw a picture too.
Challenge: Write your news using a narrative e.g. First, then, after that, finally.
Maths
Story Time
It’s Friday again and another week of being in ‘lockdown’ completed. Well done! We hope that you’re all remaining happy and healthy at home. Keep sending us your e-mails; we really do love to see your photos and read about all of the activities that you’ve been doing at home. We’ll share some of your photos at the end of this post so that you can see what your friends have been doing too.
As it’s the end of the week, we thought we’d continue with our popular Friday Story Time posts; we’ve had a lot of positive feedback to say how much children have enjoyed hearing some familiar voices . Today’s story, is another Nursery favourite. It’s called ‘ The Paper Dolls’ and is written by Julia Donaldson (published by Pan Macmillan).
Miss Logan is reading the story, and in case you’re wondering, she’s sitting in Nursery’s book corner because she has been working in ‘Big School’ this week. She’s been helping to look after Key Worker children that still attend school at some points during the week. As you can see, Nursery is exactly the same; we really hope to be all sat together, listening to stories again soon.
Here are a few questions and things to talk about after you’ve listened to the story.
- What were the girl’s slippers like?
- Can you remember what was on the girl’s ceiling?
- Who do the Paper Dolls meet along the way? (Dinosaur, pigs, tiger, crocodile, a boy)
- What do the Paper Dolls say to all of the animals/people they meet?
- Can you think of another story where the character says “You can’t catch me…”?
- What did the boy do to the Paper Dolls? How do you think the little girl felt?
- Can you pick out any of the rhyming words in the story?
If you enjoyed the story and would like to do a few activities, here are a couple of ideas to get you started.
- You could try to make your own paper dolls at home. Here is a link to a template or you could experiment with the traditional way of folding paper like Julia Donaldson talks about here. Send us a picture of all of your attempts!
- When you’ve cut out your dolls, draw faces on them and colour in their clothes. What would you name them?
- Can you make up a story together about an adventure for your dolls? Where would they go? Who would they meet? What might happen?
- Talk about memories. Parents/carers – What happy memories do you have from your childhood? Did you have a favourite toy? You could call a relative and ask them what they liked to play with as a child.
Home Learning
We hope that you enjoyed reading ‘Simon Sock’ this week. Did you help to sort the socks into pairs at home? We hope so!
Please remember, our ideas are just suggestions and there are many different ways to learn at home together. Children in Nursery learn through play. Baking, painting, jig-saws, role play, physical games outside, playdough, building Lego models, singing songs and reading stories are all activities that involve lots of opportunities for children to learn and develop skills included in the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. ‘Learning’ for Nursery children does not have to include children being sat at a table practising letters and counting, although your child may also enjoy this. We know that it can be very hard juggling work commitments and learning from home with other children in the house as well. Mrs Long, as well as others, has two young children at home. It can be hard! Keep talking to each other, read, have fun and play together as much as you can.
Here are some of the photos that you have emailed of your learning. Some are ‘Simon Sock’ activities and others are things that children have been interested in at home.
Writing: Supporting your child
Remember, it is okay for things to be spelt phonetically. It is important your child grows into an independent learner. Encouraging your child to write the words as they sound rather than always spelling correctly is important. It encourages your child to use their own skills – rather than copy from an adult.
It is important you do not let your child simply copy your writing. They need to use their phonics skills to write. Here is an example of a child’s writing in Foundation 2.
